Thursday’s US missile attack on Syria must represent the quickest foreign policy U-turn in history. Less than a week after the White House gave Assad permission to stay on as president of his own country, President Trump decided that the US had to attack Syria and demand Assad’s ouster after a chemical attack earlier in the week. Trump blamed Assad for the attack, stated that “something’s going to happen” in retaliation, and less than two days later he launched a volley of 59 Tomahawk missiles (at a cost of $1.5 million each) onto a military airfield near where the chemical attack took place.

President Trump said it is in the “vital national security interest of the United States” to attack Syria over the use of poison gas. That is nonsense. Even if what Trump claims about the gas attack is true – and we’ve seen no evidence that it is – there is nothing about an isolated incident of inhuman cruelty thousands of miles from our borders that is in our “vital national security interest.” Even if Assad gassed his own people last week it hardly means he will launch chemical attacks on the United States even if he had the ability, which he does not.

From the moment the chemical attack was blamed on Assad, however, I expressed my doubts about the claims. It simply makes no sense for Assad to attack civilians with a chemical weapon just as he is winning his war against ISIS and al-Qaeda and has been told by the US that it no longer seeks regime change. On the verge of victory, he commits a suicidal act to no strategic or tactical military advantage? More likely the gas attack was a false flag by the rebels — or perhaps even by our CIA — as a last ditch effort to forestall a rebel defeat in the six year war.

Would the neocons and the mainstream media lie to us about what happened last week in Syria? Of course they would. They lied us into attacking Iraq, they lied us into attacking Gaddafi, they lied us into seeking regime change in Syria in the first place. We should always assume they are lying.

Who benefits from the US attack on Syria? ISIS, which immediately after the attack began a ground offensive. Does President Trump really want the US to act as ISIS’s air force?

The gas attack, which took some 70 civilian lives, was horrible and must be condemned. But we must also remember that US bombs in Syria have killed hundreds of civilians. Just recently, US bombs killed 300 Iraqi civilians in one strike! Does it really make a difference if you are killed by poison gas or by a US missile?

What’s next for President Trump in Syria? Russia has not backed down from its claim that the poison gas leaked as a result of a conventional Syrian bomb on an ISIS chemical weapons factory. Moscow claims it is determined to defend its ally, Syria. Will Trump unilaterally declare a no fly zone in parts of Syria and attempt to prevent Russian air traffic? Some suggest this is his next move. It is one that carries a great danger of igniting World War Three.

Donald Trump’s attack on Syria was clearly illegal. However, Congress shows no interest in reining in this out-of-control president. We should fear any US escalation and must demand that our Representatives prohibit it. If there ever was a time to flood the Capitol Hill switchboard demanding an end to US military action in Syria, it is now!

We watch as the policy of regime change fails for the Trump regime just as it did for the Obama regime.

The policy of regime change in Syria is a remarkably stupid one if you assume the US regime has pursuing the interests of the American nation as its goal. Either the policy fails, and America wastes more money and looks just as stupid again as it did under Obama. Or the policy succeeds and the remaining parts of Syria are reduced to the kind of jihadist-ridden islamist chaos that US regime change policies brought about in Iraq and in Libya.

A policy where you lose if you succeed and you lose if you fail is truly strategerising of a George W Bush level of inanity.

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Trump wanted to show off that he does not give any importance to Russia. That is supposed to help him out of the investigation about his collusion with Putin.
He got off the hook briefly with Hillary Clinton and Mc Cain applauding.
I doubt that the sword on his presidency will not come back even harder, but this time from his not only from his enemies in the USA but from Putin, who has been accused or negligence and comlicity in the chemical attack.
Putin has a strong card against Trump. At any time he can leak information(real or fake) “confirming” his collusion with Trump in the election . Trump will have a hard time debunking it as the MSM will jump on it and call for his impeachment.
When Trump ordered the attack, he took the risk of alienating Putin to save his own head, but I could very well blow back bigger, depending of what comes next. With Lavrov, Tillerson will probably be faced with the blackmail: either you stop attacking Syria and calling for a regime change in Syria or the next regime change will be in the USA.

There is a message from the poor devil, Ron Paul! He says, “If there ever was a time to flood the Capitol Hill switchboard demanding an end to US military action in Syria, it is now!” He is implying that you, yes! you poor, delusional schmucks, actually have the power to stop the upcoming war by the Idiot in Chief in the White House by simply calling up your respective representatives. Yes, it’s that simple… Good luck!

Bashar al-Assad is a medical doctor who underwent training as an opthalmologist, just like Ron Paul’s son Rand(al). It seems unlikely that he would knowingly order the use of chemical weapons against civilian populations. Hippocratic oath, and all that, though you never really know with Muslims.

However, since Assad did some medical school in the UK, it is a safe bet that he speaks English pretty well, so why does the administration not get on the phone to him and ask him for his side of things? Or maybe the administration is doing that behind the scenes anyway and everything that is published is for public consumption only.

For that matter why don’t US journalists or TV anchors like Sean Hannity and Katie Couric get the dude on Skype to give us the view from Syria and get his point of view on why Donald Trump has undergone the biggest conversion on the road to Damascus since St. Paul saw the light back in the day.

I just get the feeling that the whole Assad the gasman meme is just a form of collective insanity that takes on a life of its own and goes viral in congress, like ideas often do.

It seems The Donald and Rawhead Rex Tillerson are speaking out of both sides of their mouths to keep everyone guessing. I don’t think the world is necessarily on the edge of their seats and neither am I.

One possibility is that they’ll try to get a war going while Congress is on recess then shame them into granting a declaration of war or “use of force against Syria” bill ex post facto. Any Congressman who doth protest will be ruthlessly shamed and shouted down as “unpatriotic” a la the run up to the Iraq war of 2003.

They lied to us in 1898 about the attack on the battleship Maine, they lied in 1915 about the sinking of the Lusitania, then again about Pearl Harbor, the bay of Tonkin attack in 1965 was a lie, the war in Kuwait in 1992.was contrived, the clintons’ war on Serbia in 1996 was manipulated by the CIA and State Department ,the Iraqi war in 2003 also a lie, the war and bombing in Libya in 2012 also based on deception and now we are supposed to believe them on Syria? When has the government of the Empire ever told the truth?

I have a friend whose husband was good friends with a fairly high ranked officer on a naval ship in the Pacific before Pearl Harbor happened. This officer told my friend's husband that their orders from Washington were "to provoke an attack from Japan."

I have a friend whose husband was good friends with a fairly high ranked officer on a naval ship in the Pacific before Pearl Harbor happened. This officer told my friend’s husband that their orders from Washington were “to provoke an attack from Japan.”

I’m hearing apologetics from many that Trump is playing “multidimensional chess”.

That is a deceptive way to say that Trump is lying.

He’s teaching China, Korea, and whomever a lesson. He’s shutting down the NeoMcCarthyism. But whatever the real reasons are, it isn’t what he says about chemical weapons and Assad.

Excuse me, but I’ve had enough of that, and it was the whole reason for getting a non-establishment figure in there. We’re sick of being lied to, and most especially lied into wars. The fact he’s willing to exploit pictures of dead babies so cynically – it’s a new low for Trump, but nothing new for us peons.

Pretty disappointing. So yeah, it begs the question – what’s next? Bomb who for what lie?

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